. >> dick durbin says when you're talking about entitlement reform or cuts in spending for medicare, medicaid for example, he says that's too complicated now. listen to what he said this morning. >> when it comes to medicare, we know that it's going to run out of money in 12 years. whatever changes we want to make should be thoughtful changes not made in the heat of the fiscal cliff. >> can you defer medicare for example -- medicare reform until after you get a deal on the fiscal cliff? >> well, if we do that, wolf, i think what you have to do is also defer the issue of taxes. i think you extend tax rates some time into the foreseeable future whether that's six months or a year and allow us to go through the process where we can deal with entitlement reform and tax reform in regular order. i don't see republicans supporting something up here that deals with taxes that doesn't have entitlement reform incorporated into that. so i think right now we're a little bit of a standoff, but the way to solve this would be of course to extend the existing tax rates which is by the way something